Flight attendant reveals trauma of 1990 Kuwait hostage crisis

UK government and British Airways being sued by passengers and crew who claim they were put in danger by decision to install a covert operations team after the Iraqi invasion

US troops in Kuwait survey the wreckage of BA flight 149, left, on which former BA flight attendant Nicola Dowling, right, was working. Reuters / Nicola Dowling

A flight attendant has revealed how she was left traumatised after being held hostage by Saddam Hussein's forces in Kuwait following the Iraqi invasion.

Nicola Dowling is among nearly 100 passengers and crew who are suing the UK government and British Airways for deliberately endangering them and negligence, after Iraq attacked its neighbour in 1990.

They are accusing the airline and the British authorities of letting the plane land when they knew the invasion had started, and using their flight to put a covert special operations team in place.

BA flight 149 left London on the evening of August 1 on its way to Kuala Lumpur and made a scheduled refuelling stop in Kuwait in the early hours of August 2, after Iraqi forces had crossed the frontier.

The 367 passengers and crew on board were held along with 55 British Airways crew members, who were in hotels in Kuwait waiting for onward deployment. The plane was later destroyed.

They were sent to different locations in Kuwait and Iraq by Saddam Hussein to be used as "human shields" to deter attacks by western forces seeking to liberate the invaded state.

During their five-month ordeal in captivity they were subjected to beatings, sexual assaults, mock executions and starvation, which left many suffering from post-traumatic stress.

Ninety-five of them have now launched a civil action against the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Cabinet Office, the Ministry of Defence and British Airways.

Ms Dowling was a flight attendant on BA149 when it landed in Kuwait and was then held in squalid conditions in Kuwait.

On the flight she noticed three men had boarded late and did not move from their seats in the section on the aircraft in which she was working.

“The most important thing about them is that they had preferential disembarkation when we landed in Kuwait,” Ms Dowling, 56, who lives near London, told The National.

“So I was asked to take them off before anybody else, which is basically unheard of for economy passengers, but it now makes sense to me.”

The crew had not noticed any signs of the invasion until they arrived at their hotel, which had been taken over by Iraqi soldiers.

They stayed at the hotel for 18 days until a 2am on August 19, she was told, along others who had been on the flight, to report to the lobby, which was “teeming” with Republican Guard soldiers in their distinctive red berets.

“They were screaming and barking orders at us. It was just mayhem and eventually when they calmed down they split us into groups, then we were put on to a bus,” she said.

After a terrifying 12-hour journey her group ended up in the IBI military camp in Kuwait, where they were held until the end of September.

“They stopped in the desert and surrounded the bus," she said.

"They pointed their rifles at us and you could have heard a pin drop. I was absolutely petrified and I actually saw snippets of my life flash past my eyes.”

Whey they got to the camp they found it in a “hideous” condition and “covered in excrement”, which they had to clean up.

“There was very little running water and we all suffered from dysentery.”

She said existence there was “hour by hour” as the soldiers guarding them “would push us around with their rifle butts”.

“These soldiers would burst into our rooms, into our houses, rifles pointing and just scream at us,” she said.

Ms Dowling said her father, who served in the RAF during the Second World War, was so fearful over what was happening that he wrote to the then-British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to offer to take her place in captivity.

“He was so concerned and was completely aware of what a despot Saddam Hussein was. He was absolutely petrified that his daughter was being held.”

Eventually she was released and repatriated to the UK by the British embassy in Baghdad, via Jordan.

Those bringing the claim allege they suffered severe physical and psychiatric harm, the consequences of which are still felt today.

Ms Dowling kept working for BA until 2005 when she was given a medical pension after her experience in Kuwait had taken a psychological toll.

“I started to get awful flashbacks. Night tremors and traumas. It was horrible and I had to go to see a psychiatrist."

In their action the claimants allege the UK government and BA knew the invasion had started but let the flight land anyway. No other airline landed in Kuwait after the invasion had begun.

“I had an implicit trust in the government and my company that they wouldn't fly us into anywhere that was remotely dangerous,” Ms Dowling said.

Barry Manners, who was a passenger on the flight, has previously described seeing a group of between “half a dozen and a dozen” men board, who stood out from others on the flight.

“We were not treated as citizens but as expendable pawns for commercial and political gain,” he said.

“A victory over years of cover-up and barefaced denial will help restore trust in our political and judicial process.”

The claimants, who come from seven countries, are being represented by lawyers McCue Jury and Partners LLP.

Matthew Jury, managing partner of the firm, said those behind the lawsuit “deserve justice for being treated as disposable collateral”.

He alleges the airline and the UK government “watched on as children were paraded as human shields by a ruthless dictator, yet they did and admitted nothing”.

“The lives and safety of innocent civilians were put at risk by the British government and British Airways for the sake of an off-the-books military operation.

“Both have, we believe, concealed and denied the truth for more than 30 years. There must be closure and accountability to erase this shameful stain on the UK’s conscience.”

The UK apologised in 2021 after admitting Britain’s ambassador to Kuwait, Sir Michael Weston, had told the Foreign Office around midnight that Iraqi troops had crossed the border, information it said was not passed on to British Airways.

British Airways have been asked for a response. The government declined to comment.